A brush with war, missing the gore

Why some pictures are not in this book is as intriguing as some of the works that are, writes Daphne Guinness.

When does a hard-nosed TV journalist become a softie? When he writes a book about war artists. Scott Bevan's Battle Lines hasn't a critical word in it. "I was the wide-eyed kid sitting on a paint-spattered stool with these guys, saying, 'OK, tell me about it.' That was the whole point. Not to criticise, to sit there, listen, and admire," he says, explaining the switch from objective reporter to innocent observer.

Covering East Timor for A Current Affair and meeting the artist Wendy Sharpe aboard HMAS Jervis Bay triggered the idea. "I couldn't believe how lucky I was. Time and space had plonked me in this vomit, close to an artist I admired, ducking the puke, pulling out charcoal and paper and sketching."

He did a TV story on her, and bingo, his book was born. "Then I wrote to Sir William Dargie and Nora Heyson, and they said come around. The rest I phoned cold and didn't get one knock-back." Though Bevan insists his book is a celebration "so people looking for controversy will be disappointed", they will ask questions. Why so few photographs, for a start. Why the stinginess?

Alan Moore was the first to see the Belsen concentration camp but those pictures aren't in. Bevan says they were top of his wish list. "There was a problem of supply, I guess. There was no censoring." Other questions: Dargie was official war artist in World War II but his work was labelled meagre. Why?

Bevan doesn't know. Strange, because Dargie's In the Slit Trench, Gambut, Libya, 1942, the book's wrapper, reeks of guts. So does his Stretcher Bearers in Owen Stanleys (that's in).

Dargie said Moore shied away from the horror he saw in Belsen (wrong, he sketched it all), but other artists were wary. Did the Australian War Museum apply pressure to keep the work sweet, not sour? Apparently not. They were told to "concentrate on Australians. Watch our boys and girls," says Bevan. But Pat Forster painted the USS Peary sinking in Darwin Harbour and refused to show the doomed crew on deck. Perhaps artists are wimps when reality turns gruesome?

Bevan says: "Forster responded like any compassionate man. I, too, would not draw the bodies. His painting was never meant for the world. It was meant for his parents." Now it's outed for everyone in the book. Ray Parkin was another artist who "didn't go for horror pictures", not even barbed wire at Bandoeng, where he was a Japanese prisoner of war. He focused on beauty, no matter how small. Toadstools growing out of elephant dung, he said, "seemed to sing a pure song of innocence". Bevan laughs. "Yes, he was the most gorgeous man. You can tell I am biased." Yet if they were not discouraged from depicting ghastly scenes, how accurate a reflection of the true horror of war is their work? "That's the beauty of art," Bevan snaps. "Each viewer responds differently. Wendy Sharpe and Rick Amor in East Timor chose not to paint blood and gore." Sharpe, in fact, painted a behind-the-scene view of Kylie Minogue performing at a concert. "And what Rick says is correct: beating people over the head with horror is OK once; after that it's not effective."

It's hard to envisage a war artist using an easel, yet Peter Churcher did for Operations Room, HMAS Kanimbla (2002), (that's in). In Afghanistan he paints The Piss-A-Phone, Outside Bombed Buildings, Bagram - ordinariness delivered with a smile (that's not). Worried, before leaving, he cornered his mother Betty. "God, how do I paint in that environment?" Easy. "Take small canvases and work as you go. Bring it back completed." Mother knew best. Lewis Miller, official artist in Iraq, had the problem of painting faceless SAS men in camouflage. Relaxing Before General Cosgrove Arrives is in . His amazing scrum of soldiers around the general is not. Eighty watercolours became three major works, now showing at the War Memorial, Canberra.

Naturally, it took a woman to upset the girls. Nora Heyson, Australia's first official woman war artist, was made captain and paid men's rates. Feminists were furious. The Memorial's Lieutenant-Colonel John Treloar dismissed her tea-and-dance party paintings as social. Bevan: "Nora grunted with annoyance recalling those skirmishes but I loved her argument that khaki was a dreadful colour and it was a good excuse to paint something bright." She counteracted with women in men's jobs: Transport Driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles) and a florid hospital scene: Sponging a Malaria Patient, both in. And here's a surprise: John Coburn can actually draw. He isn't just the blobs and patterns for which he became famous. In the navy he drew ships.

Ray Parkin let Bevan choose his pictures: a self-portrait and Air Attack Battle of Crete (both in). His dramatic two malaria-ridden PoWs helping a mate with cholera back to camp "hanging like a crucified man, like a wobbly tripod" didn't make it, but Kenneth Jack's three Borneo paintings do. He painted 500 pictures.

Ray Crooke saw war through the eyes of a Goya: Burial is in. Bruce Fletcher was the first artist to be shot but, back in Melbourne, felt "shat on" by anti-Vietnam feeling and wished he'd never been a war artist. Three macho paintings made the book. And so did Ray Beattie's Image for a Dead Man. It gets a full page. The soldier's uniform, his medals and Australian flag folded on a chair provoked a backlash. People saw it as derogatory. Not Bevan.

"It was Ray's comment on war, not on those sent out to fight, those who do the sending."